10 Health IT Wishes for 2012

It’s easy to make predictions about health IT for the year to come, but what if someone asked what your IT wishes were for 2012? What would you like to see happen most in the health IT space?

We asked Wendy Whittington, MD, a practicing pediatrician and chief medical officer of Anthelio Healthcare Solutions, to list her top 10 IT wishes for 2012. From interoperability to telehealth, Whittington outlined what she, and most of her peers, would hope to see come true during the upcoming year...

2. The emergence of more affordable solutions for healthcare systems and hospitals to attain meaningful use. Many hospitals and systems have been scrambling to find a fast solution to an EHR, said Whittington, to gain access to those meaningful use dollars. “But what ends up happening is they think to get there, [they need to] buy the biggest and the best,” she said.

“The total cost of ownership far exceeds the return they’ll get back. I’d like to see a lot of the lesser-known providers of EHRs getting more attention.” Whittington also added alternatives to EHRs, like open source, could be just as successful for a 100-bed hospital, for example. “I’d put the money into optimizing the less-expensive option,” she said...